Where's Mount Justice
by Silver Hunteress
Summary: Crack written for the Young Justice anon meme at LJ. Young Justice is gone and the League has no idea where to find it. Superboy's mostly confused by that guy in the red and white sweater who just showed up, and he won't stay put!


**Where's Mt. Justice?**

By silverhunteress

Written for yj_anon_meme at Livejournal

Prompt: i can't find my house  
(1-845):  
we droppd you off right in front! i even walked you to the steps less then 3 mins ago.  
(845):  
i'm pretty sure my house moved

GUYS!  
MOUNT JUSTICE HAS MOVED!  
Cue everyone being confused, including Superboy who is _still in the base._ He doesn't normally leave during the day so he was there when it moved.  
Where did it go?  
(Because, you know, it's not like the mountain got fed up with a bunch of teenagers living inside it and leaving trash everywhere and being loud and not letting it sleep at night and attempting to give it cancer due to so much smoke from failed cooking attempts and carving a hole for people to live in inside you hurts, you know- oh, god.)  
The mountain is to Young Justice as Roy is to Ollie. _Fed up._  
BONUS if it's like a game of Where's Waldo (Where's MT. Justice?) and Superboy asks if they have a new addition to the team, some redhead in stripped shirt. Superboy can't see where he is or leave, but they get along great and watch No Signal together.

Note: This was written during the hiatus between Bereft and Targets waaay back in season 1. I cleaned it up a bit, tweaked Batman's speech and decided to post it here.

* * *

It had been an uneventful day right up to the point where the mountain _shook_.

Superboy was thrown to the ground and Rolly gave a frightened beep. Food fell from the cabinets, plates broke against the floor, the motorcycles all toppled over. The zeta-beam transport sparked alarmingly before making a low groan that cut off abruptly.

It was over in less than a minute but the headquarters was left looking trashed.

Conner looked at Rolly questioningly, "An earthquake in Rhode Island?"

A noncommittal beep.

Conner frowned. "That can't have been natural," he said decisively, pushing himself up. The lights were still on, but the mountain had its own power source, Happy Harbor could have lost electricity, and the buildings weren't built to withstand quakes. He needed to get down there; cleaning the base could wait.

Striding toward the exit, a flash of red and white caught his eye, but when he turned to look, nothing was there.

"Rolly did you see that?"

The only response was an inquisitive chirrup.

"Never mind."

The doors opened, but the scenery outside looked… wrong. It wasn't the grass and trees hiding the entrance, but endless waves of long grasses swaying in a breeze that lacked even the slightest hint of ocean air.

"Not good."

()()()()()

"_Batman," _Red Tornado intoned over the comm, _"We have a situation."_

Activating his own communicator, Bruce asked, "What kind of situation?"

"_Mount Justice is gone."_

Blink. Blinkblink. "Come again?"

"_Mount Justice is gone."_

"Gone how?" Bruce demanded, then winced, what kind of a question-

"_I do not know. I am at the coordinates of the mountain's location but there is no mountain here. It is as if it never existed."_

A chill crawled up Bruce's spine. "I'm on my way."

()()()()()

Clark sighed, it was a slow day for crime and monitor duty at the Watchtower had never been duller. It was almost enough for Clark to wish for something to happen, nothing life-threatening but a minor emergency, _anything_ to-

Superboy's face flickered onto a screen.

He thought too soon.

"_Mount Justice to the Watchtower, come in."_

Clark winced.

"_Watchtower, this is Mount Justice, come in."_

He pressed the button, activating his end of the video feed, "This is the Watchtower, what's the situation?"

Superboy frowned before responding. _"Mount Justice has changed locations."_

This time Clark frowned, "Say what?"

"_Mount Justice is no longer in Happy Harbor."_

This was ridiculous, "Did Robin or Kid Flash put you up to this?"

Superboy cocked his head like a confused puppy, _"Up to what?"_

"Prank calling the Watchtower."

"_This is not a prank!"_ the boy looked furious, _"Mount Justice has moved!"_

"Superboy, calling the emergency line when there's no emergency-"

"_This _is_ an emergency!"_

Clark had just opened his mouth to respond when.

"_Batman to Watchtower, come in."_

"Hold on a second, Superboy." He activated the audio line. "This is the Watchtower, go ahead Batman."

"_Mount Justice has moved."_

"WHAT?"

"_I need you to get on communications to the mountain. Superboy should still be inside."_

Superboy looked a little smug on his video screen, and Clark wished he had muted the damn thing.

"H-he's on comms now," he replied weakly. "I thought it was a joke."

"_No joke. Keep the line open, Red Tornado and I will be there soon."_

"Right, see you then." Bruce closed his communication line and Clark was left to make small talk with his clone.

"Moved?" he asked.

Superboy just nodded.

"Huh, that's a new one."

()()()()()

The Batplane landed a few hundred yards from the Mount Justice site. Just as Red Tornado had said, there was nothing there. The ground was perfectly smooth the grass covering the area seemed no different than the grass surrounding.

Bruce approached Red Tornado swiftly, "What happened?"

"I was preparing to return to Mount Justice after making reports regarding last week's events with Sinestro. The zeta-beam informed me that transport to Mount Justice was impossible due to malfunction on the receiving pad."

Bruce frowned, "What time was that?"

"13:28, local time."

"I transported to the Hall of Justice and flew the remaining distance, when I saw the base was gone, I initiated several scans to determine if the apparent disappearance was a hologram, or illusion."

"And?"

"My scanners show nothing to impair perception of the mountain. No heat from the area, no vibrations, simply gone."

Batman crouched, collecting grass and soil samples. "What about underground? The water and sewer pipes?"

"X-ray shows nothing."

"Who was inside when you left?"

"Superboy and Rolly."

Bruce turned an incredulous look on the android, "Rolly?"

Red Tornado nodded, "The sphere recovered from Bialya. Kid Flash named it Rolly."

"I see." They named the sphere, now Bruce really hoped the thing didn't go rogue. "Let's hope communications are still working, wherever they are." He opened a channel, "Batman to Watchtower, come in."

()()()()()

Clark couldn't remember the last time he had been so relieved to see Bruce (it probably had something to do with Kryptonite in his vicinity though). He had kept the line to Mount Justice open and had sat in increasingly awkward silence with the boy on the screen for the last ten minutes.

Black Canary had poked her head in to wave at Superboy but hadn't stuck around; Clark doubted that anyone who hadn't tried to go to the Young Justice base knew about the involuntary relocation.

Anyway, Bruce was here now and was acting to diffuse the tension.

"Superboy, report."

The clone visibly straightened, _"At 13:27 there was a seismic event lasting about forty-five seconds. The zeta-beam transporter was disabled, and some other equipment suffered minor damage."_

"Source?" Bruce asked gruffly.

"_Unknown, but as near as I can tell it was during the quake that the mountain was moved. I didn't know that it had happened until I tried to leave."_

"Leave?" Clark asked, the base had been damaged why would he leave before reporting it?

Superboy scowled, _"I thought that Happy Harbor had been hit by an earthquake, or the aftershocks of one. I was going to help in any rescue efforts."_

"Do you have any clues about where you are?" Bruce asked.

"_Not much."_ Feeds from the exterior cameras appeared on the screen, plains, as far as the eye could see.

"Can you get a grass sample?"

The feeds disappeared, showing a still scowling Superboy, _"No, there's a barrier of some sort over the exits, I try to leave and get transported right back inside. Rolly too, even inanimate objects. Nothing is getting out, getting in maybe, but not out."_

"If there's a barrier there must be something causing it. Did you examine the exits?"

"_Yes, there's nothing strange that I can see, there might be something on the outside that infrared and X-ray can't pick up but I doubt it."_

"Batman," Clark murmured, "Those plains could be anywhere. He might not even be on Earth anymore."

"I know," he murmured back. "Superboy?"

"_Yes?"_

"Do you still have control over the exterior cameras?"

There was a sound of commands being typed in. _"Yes."_

"We'll do what we can; in the event that we haven't located you by nightfall I want you to get as much footage of the night sky as you can."

Superboy nodded.

"Keep looking for a way out as well, a grass sample would help tremendously."

"_Will do, also, Batman?"_

"Yes?"

"_Did we get a new teammate?"_

The three heroes exchanged looks before Batman responded, "No, why?"

"_Then we have an intruder. I haven't gotten a good look at him, but he's wearing a red and white striped shirt and I think he keeps waving at me."_

"What do you mean you haven't gotten a good look at him?"

"_Every time I turn around he's gone. I only ever see him out of the corner of my eye."_

That was disturbing, "Hostile?"

"_Not so far."_

"Stay alert, we will find you. Call if anything changes."

"_Alright."_

The screen blacked out.

Clark cleared his throat, "Did, did he just describe _Waldo_?"

"Maybe."

"Batman," Red Tornado interjected, "the triangulation did not work. For some reason the signal is one way. Superboy can contact us, but we cannot contact him, nor can we trace it."

"Fabulous."

()()()()()

"Look for a way out he says," Conner grumbled, examining the hangar exit _again_. "What does he think I've been _doing_?" he asked Rolly.

The sphere beeped soothingly.

Sighing, Conner sat down, "What would Robin do?"

"_A dead end!"_

"_No," Robin had smirked, "this is perfect."_

"Air ducts." Glancing around Conner spotted one; he briefly debated ripping the cover from the stone but sighed and fetched a screwdriver instead.

Kaldur wouldn't appreciate explaining the damage to Batman.

As he knelt by the vent he caught movement in his peripheral, whirling around he saw nothing. That was getting really annoying. Gritting his teeth he turned back to the vent; it would be too small to crawl through but if he could just see outside…

Removing the panel, Conner could see daylight through the grate just beyond reach of his arm. Picking up a discarded screw, he flicked it toward the exit.

It passed through the exterior grate and bounced back into the vent.

Rolly made a disappointed noise.

"Let's see if that happens at all of them," he suggested to his companion, as he replaced the cover.

According to the Mount Justice schematics there were exactly ten ventilation shafts that reached the exterior of the mountain.

()()()()()

Out of those ten, nine were inaccessible to anyone with shoulders broader than Kid Flash and limbs that did not stretch.

The one was located in the hangar and had been proven fruitless five minutes ago.

Conner groaned.

Rolly whirred, reminiscent of a sigh.

"So much for that idea." Another flash of red and white. Snarling, Conner hurled his screwdriver in the intruder's direction.

The intruder yelped.

()()()()()

"Satellites got nothing, Bats," Flash reported. Bruce had quietly called him to help with the search; Clark was doing flyovers of possible sites, as was Red Tornado. "We managed to record the disappearance though."

"Play it for me."

"Sure thing." Fingers flew over the keyboard, "Here we go… normal day, normal day… aaaannnnd there it goes."

On screen the mountain was… pulsating in and out of existence until finally it vanished altogether.

Barry was looking at him brows furrowed under the cowl, "Bruce, I don't know about you but this is nothing like anything I've seen."

"Same," Bruce confided, "play it again."

The men watched for a second time.

"There's no apparent external force acting on it," Bruce mused.

"Almost like it decided to just walk out on its own."

Bruce shot him a withering glare.

"Did your samples turn up anything?"

"No, perfectly normal, hopefully when Superboy sends us the footage from tonight we'll be able to at least _find_ the base."

"Has he called in since last time?"

"No, I'd imagine he's re-examining the exits."

()()()()()

"Get back here!" Conner roared, barreling after the mystery man in red and white.

He'd managed to hit the other with the screwdriver and saw him dart around the nearest corner. He had never seen the man before the quake, so maybe this man had something to do with it. Or that's what he was hoping anyway, the alternative was that he'd attacked a civilian.

The stranger turned into the training room and Conner _grinned_ there was no other way out, the man was trapped.

As soon as he entered the room, he saw the other, looking frantically for a hiding space.

Conner tackled him.

"Now," he growled, "who are you, why are you here?"

The man blinked from behind owlish glasses, before smiling. "I'm Waldo," he said, "You found me!"

And promptly vanished into thin air.

"Wha-"

The mountain _shook_.

()()()()()

"We haven't been able to find anything, Bruce," Clark said, Barry was still too winded to talk. "I think he's off planet, or maybe a pocket dimension."

Bruce sighed heavily; he'd hoped that together Superman, the Flash, and Red Tornado would be able to scour the world for the lost mountain and scour they had, with absolutely no results beyond a long list of where Mount Justice was not.

A video screen flickered to life, _"Mount Justice to the Watchtower, come in."_

Bruce lunged for the console, "Superboy, what's your situation?"

"_Back in Happy Harbor."_

Flash made an outraged noise that might have contained the word what and several curses.

"What happened?" Batman asked.

"_I found Waldo."_

…

No one really had a response to that.

Thinking the older heroes needed a more through briefing he continued, _"The intruder I mentioned before, I caught him and asked him why he was here. He said his name was Waldo and that I found him."_ The clone shrugged, _"Then he disappeared, there was another earthquake, and everything was back to normal. Except for the zeta-beam, that's still broken."_

"I will return to base, then," Red Tornado decided, "I can repair the beam when I arrive."

Superboy nodded and the screen blanked out.

The android bade farewell to his comrades and made his way to the transport room.

"He found _WALDO_?" Barry croaked.

"He found Waldo," Bruce confirmed.

"Just when I thought my life couldn't get stranger…" Clark mused.

END

* * *

Crack, crack and more crack! But it's cheery and entertaining at least!


End file.
